- Sportsnet caught Tocchet laying into Zegras on the Flyers bench
- Zegras answered with a tying goal early in the second period
- Read below for the full sequence and Carolina’s 4-1 Game 3 win
Rick Tocchet wasn’t whispering Thursday night.
Sportsnet’s cameras caught the Flyers head coach getting in Trevor Zegras’s face on the bench during Game 3 against the Hurricanes. Pointed finger, eyes locked, the kind of in-game correction that doesn’t care who’s watching.
Watch the moment:
It worked, at least for a shift. Zegras tied the game 1-1 at 2:31 of the second period, chipping a Porter Martone shot that deflected off Flyers defenseman Emil Andrae over Frederik Andersen’s glove from the bottom of the right circle.
Then Carolina took it away.
Jordan Staal had opened the scoring at 17:27 of the first with a power-play goal. Jalen Chatfield put the Hurricanes back ahead 2-1 with a short-handed goal at 15:59 of the second.
The third got out of hand. Andrei Svechnikov scored on a 4-on-3 power play at 3:52, and Nikolaj Ehlers buried a breakaway at 7:08 to make it 4-1.
Andersen finished with 26 saves. Vladar stopped 26 of 30 at the other end. Carolina is now 7-0 in this postseason and one win from the Eastern Conference Final.
The Tocchet-Zegras tension isn’t new. The 25-year-old came over from Anaheim with a reputation for freelancing, and Tocchet has been pretty direct about wanting that part of his game pulled back.
There were a couple of similar blowups during the regular season. Tocchet also moved Zegras to center midway through the year, a position the Ducks never let him handle full-time.
Whatever the friction, it produced numbers. Zegras posted a career-high 67 points (26 goals, 41 assists) in 81 games.
Here are the Game 3 highlights:
The Flyers go back home for Game 4 facing elimination, and Tocchet has already said his team has “been dead before.” They’ll need to prove that pretty quickly.
